1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to a method and apparatus for producing large amounts of energy by utilizing the temperature differential between hot surface water and cold subsurface water of a large body of water, and in particular, to a method and apparatus for producing large amounts of electrical energy by air-lifting the cold subsurface water to the top of a large area of a body of water thereby creating distinct adjacent surface areas of water having a temperature differential capable of being efficiently and conveniently used to generate vast amounts of useful pollution-free energy.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The need for pollution-free energy and for energy which does not exhaust the world's natural resources is readily apparent. Energy produced by fossil fuels causes both air pollution and exhausts our natural resources. The energy produced by fissile fuels (nuclear power) causes thermal pollution of either the atmosphere or the earth's waters, not to mention the problems of radioactive waste disposal associated therewith and are yet unsolved. Solar energy is the obvious answer to our energy and pollution problems.
As stated by J. Hilbert Anderson in his keynote address on Sept. 26, 1974, at the Clean Energy Research Institute in Washington, D.C., sponsored by the Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion Program, National Science Foundation:
"Of all the sources of power, ignoring the ones that require fuel, only wind-power, geothermal power and sea thermal power are economically feasible. Of all these, since geothermal power and sea thermal power both have a high load factor, these will be the cheapest forms of power that we can ever produce . . . PA2 I know there are a lot of difficulties in developing sea thermal power. I know this workshop will discuss many of the problems. I myself have often concentrated on the problems . . . We are now thoroughly convinced that all these problems can be solved very economically. We're more confident than ever, that this is the case and that the potential here is so great that there is simply no way to avoid starting to develop and build sea thermal power plants. This is a job that can be done, gentlemen, it must be done, and it will be done."
As of the date of this invention, it is obvious that the prophesy and dictates of Mr. Anderson have not been fulfilled. The costs of energy are on the increase. The adverse effects of the production of energy are on the increase. The ever-increasing deficit in the balance of payments between the United States and our foreign neighbors is unchecked and growing out of control. Foreign nations are depleting their natural resources, which resources cannot be replaced. Air pollution in the California area of the United States, the Tokyo area of Japan as well as other areas in the world are making these areas unlivable.
A new source of pollution-free energy is needed now. It is here and available. It involves little of the complexities of unknowns, skills, procedures, time and money that was involved in the making of the atomic bomb.
Just a few hundred feet down in our oceans there is a pollution-free self-producing, diffused solar energy ready to meet much of civilization's power needs.
A fair-sized hurricane has the power of five hundred thousand (500,000) atomic bombs of the type used on Nagasaki. It derives its energy from the accumulation of the heat of evaporation over vast areas over water. Since action and reaction are equal in opposite directions, for all the heat the vapor takes it leaves an equal amount of "cold". This cold plus the cold of winter and from the submarine artic and antartic currents and the melting of ice is "stored" below the surface in the ocean and retained under a cover of warmer water. There is no convection to cause loss of the cold.
To convert the amount of energy stored as cold in the subsurface waters of the ocean, it takes the power of a dozen Hoover Dams to blow a nine (9) mile per hour wind over the two thousand five hundred (2,500) square miles of the Los Angeles basin. Yet, all over the world, a temperature difference between land and the adjacent waters cause winds to blow over tens of thousands of miles of land and water. Thus, by controlling the wind one can make wind one of the great producers of electricity before the gas and oil "run out". Now, for the first time, and in accordance with the instant patent, winds and their speeds can be under man's control.
With expenditure of 100,000 to 200,000 horse power, enough "cold" energy could be obtained to do the work of ten (10) to twenty (20) Hoover Dams to support onshore winds, to stop offshore winds or to let the offshore winds persist if it has the desired speed. The power developed can be used to surface the cold subsurface water and develop a desired temperature difference between it and the land temperature. If the temperature decrease due to the upwelling can be controlled, one can control the sea breeze intensity. My patents granted and pending make this energy available by using the fact that the specific heat of water is more than 3,000 times that of air, and when water is not raised above its surface level, each cubic foot weighs one (1) ounce instead of 621/2 pounds.
In the past, methods to utilize the temperature differential between the 40.degree. F. cold subsurface waters and warm 85.degree. F. surface waters have been concerned with the location of these waters as they exist in oceans or seas. Thus, large distances in the order of 1,000 feet were involved. This large distance negated the effectiveness of the various attempts to utilize the naturally occurring temperature differential; and, therefore, no efficient method exists in the prior art to tap the vast potential of thermal sea power. Yet, it is the magnitude of the sea's thermal power that makes it so important. The recoverable energy from the sea is more than enough to meet the world's energy needs for any foreseeable time.
The instant invention overcomes these problems of the prior art by causing the cold subsurface water to be upwelled to the surface of a large body of warm water, immediately adjacent to the warm surface water. The condition thus capable of being created can be used to provide a heat engine cycle with the necessary cooling and heating to drive gas turbines. And, this can be done without the need, as in the prior art, to pump the fluid of the heat engine between the surface of warm water and the depths of a sea to reach its cold water.
In my prior patents, I have disclosed a method for controlling smog, U.S. Pat. No. 3,465,964, issued Sept. 9, 1969, involving the creation of onshore winds which displaced the polluted atmosphere over adjacent shore lands. In that patent, I described a method whereby the colder subsurface water is caused to be upwelled and turbulently mixed with the surface water of the ocean at a location adjacent to a city such as Los Angeles, thereby producing a mass of cold air above the ocean. The cold air would then force a polluted inversion layer existing over the adjacent land mass to ascend and be displaced thereby by the cold clean air. Thus, solar energy transformed into sea thermal power can effectively be utilized to cleanse polluted air over coastal cities.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,627, issued on Aug. 15, 1972, I described a method and apparatus for improved means for upwelling subsurface water. In that patent, it was shown that such upwelling was desirable for purposes of changing the water temperature at the surface of a body of water, or to oxygenate the water, or to cause an upward current which can raise materials such as nutrients from the ocean bottom. There, the method involved dissolving air into the water, well below the surface of the water, thereby saturating the same causing it to be more buoyant or lighter than other water in the vacinity so that a current of this lighter water is started and continues toward the surface.
In accordance with U.S. Pat. No. 3,950,030, issued Apr. 13, 1976, underwater mining was shown to be feasible by using compressed air supplied by a ship having air tubes associated with conduits extending from the vessel to the lower reaches of the ocean floor.
In all of the above-described patents, the main principle involved is that each cubic foot of subsurface water weighs exactly the same as an adjacent cubic foot of water. Thus, to raise one discrete volume of water relative to another, all that is necessary is to make it lighter in weight. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,683,627, the subsurface water was saturated with air to make it lighter. In U.S. Pat. No. 3,465,964, it was shown that a gallon of ocean water at 5.degree. C. weighs 0.01466 pounds more than it weighs at 20.degree. C., or less than 30 pounds per ton. Therefore, to life 30 cu. ft. of ocean water, or in actuality one ton, at the rate of 1,000 feet per minute, only one horsepower is required.
In accordance with the above, a main object of this invention is to upwell cold subsurface water to the surface of a large body of tropic water so that both cold water and warm water separately exist at the surface of the body of water.
It is another object of this invention to provide a suitable method and apparatus for upwelling a sufficient volume of subsurface water so as to create a large contiguous surface layer of cold water which floats on the surface of the tropical body of water.
Another object of this invention is to disclose a method and apparatus for converting sea thermal power into electrical energy by creating a large number of floating layers of cold water each of which is surrounded by warm tropical water and utilizing the temperature differential therebetween to provide heating and cooling of a fluid employed within a heat engine.